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VIDEO | Jean Cates and Sue Cunningham are known for their sizeable black western hats, but they have some pretty fancy boots to fill as inductees in the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame out of more than 500 nominees.

Cunningham, of Hartley, and Cates, of Amarillo, grew up in Channing with a father who was a chuckwagon cook and took his influences on the competitive tour to make a national reputation for themselves.

“We’re going to keep doing it as long as we’re able,” said Cunningham, who’s 79, on the topic of retirement. “We might be getting a little closer maybe.”

“The reason we can keep going is we’ve got two youngbloods,” she said. “We’ve got her daughter Peggy Pippin and my grandson Wade Cates ... They do an awful lot of work.”

They broke into chuckwagon competition after serving coffee at their wagon, and they just happened to include dessert, to praises at an Amarillo ranch rodeo in 1987.

“They have a traveling trophy that they give to winning teams. It’s a replica of our dad’s wagon,” Cates said.

In 1992, they caused a stir in Abilene by becoming the first women to win the Western Heritage Classic Cook-off.

“They had never had women there. They didn’t allow them,” Cates said. “We paved the way.”

Since then, they’ve won every major competition at least once.

They also won the American Cowboy Culture Award presented by the National Cowboy Symposium and Celebration, were named Chuckwagon of the Year by the Academy of Western Artists and published three chuckwagon cookbooks and one on belt buckles.

And that’s meant a good bit of travel. The farthest they’ve gone was California.

“In Apple Valley, Calif., we did a memorial for Roy Rogers,” Cunningham said.

And the trail has left them with stories to tell. They once were competing in Ruidoso, N.M., when Cates was wearing a black outfit while making biscuits when the wind got up and gave her a heavy dusting of flour.

“This guy comes up and said ‘You know I always want to eat at the wagon where the cooks are the dirtiest, and I think you’ve got it and I want to come back and eat with you,” she said.

The ladies have waited a long time for the honor that’s coming to them Oct. 23. They were nominated in 2002. Getting into the Hall of Fame is an “arduous process,” said Diana Vela, associate executive director of exhibits and education.

“We require an application, or nomination form, which is rather lengthy. We require corroboration of that information. We also do research in-house when we receive a nomination. Roughly half of all nominations get returned to the sender, so simply being accepted as a ‘nominee’ is an honor,” she said.

Research of the nominees follow, and two more selection committees work to pick the inductees.

“We look for those women who are extraordinary on a national level,” Vela said.

According to its mission statement, the Museum and Hall of Fame celebrates women “whose lives exemplify the courage, resilience and independence that helped shape the American West.”

There have been multiple women from the Texas Panhandle who fit that goal and have landed in the Hall of Fame for a variety of reasons.

Many were early competitors in women’s rodeo. Others include:

■ Mary Ann Goodnight, who came with pioneer Charles Goodnight

■ Cornelia “Nina” Wadsworth Ritchie, who is the fourth-generation owner of JA Ranch founded by her great-grandparents, Cornelia and John Ritchie along with Goodnight

■ Katherine Binford, who ranched with her two daughters in Oldham County after her husband and their father died in the 1930s

■ Minnie Lou Bradley, who opened the doors of the livestock breeding and management industry for women from her operations near Childress

■ Margaret Harper, who founded the Texas Panhandle Heritage Foundation and was instrumental in the creation of the musical “Texas”

■ Margaret Formby, who has the closest relationship with the Hall of Fame, having led it while it was in Hereford and helping land it in 2001 in a new, 33,000-square-foot building in Fort Worth

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